
Under the coordination of The Institute of Journalism in Dortmund, EJTA is cooperating in the creation of an online course on EU cohesion policy. The project is funded by the European Commission with one million euros and is entitled "Covering Cohesion Policy in Europe - Training MOOC for European Journalism Students" (COPE). All universities that train journalists at Bachelor level will have access to the teaching material in the future. The special feature: in addition to English, the course content will also be offered in the respective national language. The project was launched in January at the kick-off event in the Erich Brost House in Dortmund.
COPE aims to provide teaching content on covering EU cohesion policy - policies designed to strengthen economic and social cohesion in the European Union. Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is what a course of this size is called. The project partners are jointly creating such an online course with 14 modules in English, which will then be translated into the national languages of the European Union. In early 2024, the online course will be tested by journalism students at all 27 universities involved in the project. Most of these journalism institutes are a member of EJTA. Read more here.
©Anna Klinge
EJTA cooperated actively in the Erasmus+ KA2- project DESTIN, Journalism Education for Democracy in Ukraine: Developing Standards, Integrity and Professionalism.
More info and outcomes: https://www.destin-project.info/en/
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Download the EUFACTCHECK flowchart here (PDF file).
The guidelines of EJTA’s fact-checking project EUfactcheck were published in February 2020 and launched during the Train the trainer in Ljubljana.
If you’re interested in practical takeaways and concrete process and project descriptions, you can download the pdf here.
EUFACTCHECK is the fact-checking project of EJTA that intends to build a sustainable curriculum unit on fact checking within a European network of Journalism schools.
The project gathers more than 20 EJTA schools that organise national fact-checking projects for their students in order to prepare for its peak: a European fact-checking network during EU parliamentary elections in 2019.
The EUFACTCHECK schools all want to work on the following main objectives:
• to support quality journalism and journalism education;
• to train journalism students the latest fact-checking techniques and tools with which they can produce quality fact-checks on a pan-European platform;
• to contribute to the accuracy of European political statements made by media and politicians in order to enhance a more fact-based public debate.
In order to establish this, EJTA organises workshops for the EUCHECK participants to discuss the concept, methodology and practical output, one day before the EJTA conferences.
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Council of Europe Prize for Fact Checking 2019
The Council of Europe Prize is awarded on a yearly basis to the students’ publication on our website that shows best EUfactcheck’s methodology and approach. It is created with support of the Council of Europe, and not meant to be a financial award, but a honourable mentioning of the title, which the respective winning school can carry with pride all year long.
The 2019 jury (Giuseppe Zaffuto, Council of Europe / Jan Jagers, Belgian professional fact-checker / Nico Drok and Alexandra Stark, EJTA) selected three fact checks as a final top three.
Out of their report:
“The jury is full of praise for all shortlist entries that show the EUfactcheck project is extremely valuable, certainly but not only from a journalistic-didactic point of view. All publications show how seriously and meticulously students checked the facts, but also prove their awareness of the complexity of factual correctness or ‘the’ reality. All publications on the short list treated complex topics, used relevant sources in a transparent way. They all followed the EUfactcheck format and illustrated the fact check’s content creatively. The final top three was selected on the basis of methodology, with specific stress on relevance and scope.”
And here are the finalists:
NUMBER 1 by Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht
NUMBER 2 by University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.
NUMBER 3 by Hochschule der Medien, Stuttgart.
The jury also wants to give a special mention to the best Behind the Facts-publication in 2019 and this honourary title goes to Artevelde University College, Gent.
November 2020 update
The future keeps on looking bright for EJTA’s fact-checking project. In autumn 2020 EUfactcheck starts its fourth publication season with new ideas, participants and initiatives such as cross-national collaboration between EJTA schools, new formats (media analysis) and a possibility for staff to publish tips and tricks on how to teach fact checking.
If you’re interested to join EUfactcheck in spring semester 2021, please send a mail to Nadia Vissers.
EUfactcheck Train the Trainer, 13 and 14 February 2020
More than 40 journalism staff took part in a new EUfactcheck Train the Trainer, hosted by EJTA member Ljubljana University on 13 and 14 February 2020. The participants came from all over the European continent, with a focus on Central and Eastern European countries. The two training days were filled with infosessions on the project’s lessons learned and with workshops and hands on sessions on the EUfactcheck methodology. The training was funded by the Evens Foundation. The production team plans to publish on www.eufactcheck.eu with new and ‘old’ participants from March 2020 onwards.
Please visit the EUFACTCHECK website to download the train the trainer manual. (avaible as from March 2020)
Paris 2019 (Summer)
Thessaloniki 2018 (Autumn)
In October 2018 we’ll launch the website www.eufactcheck.eu
Barcelona 2018 (Spring)
From spring 2018 onwards all documents and resources will be gathered on Google Drive.
Train the trainer Moscow 2017 (autumn)
Presentations meeting Munich 2017 (spring)
Kick-off Meeting on 26th of October 2016 in Paris
The presentations given at the Kick-off meeting in Paris can be consulted here:
Journalistic Roles, Values and Qualifications in the 21st century; how journalism educators view the future of a profession in transition.
Dr. Maria Lukina – Chair; Moscow
Mike Baker; Plymouth
Dr. Annelore Deprez; Ghent
Dr. Merja Drake; Helsinki
DAri Heinonen; Tampere
Dr. Anna Keshelashvili; Tbilisi
Dr. Radu Meza; Cluj/Napoca
Dr. Nikos S. Panagiotou; Thessaloniki
Kate Shanahan; Dublin
The research will be financed and carried out by Windesheim Media Research Centre, Zwolle (Netherlands) under the supervision of Dr. Nico Drok.
Period: 15 November 2018 – 14 November 2022
This project has two main objectives:
1. Curriculum Reform
Curriculum Reform: to reform, start to deliver and evaluate new/revised curriculum for 9 BA and 11 MA Journalism programmes (2 degrees in each of the 10 Ukrainian partner universities), and the institutional quality assurance for academic programmes, enabling staff and students to develop strong and sustainable connections with European journalism departments and associations.
2. Curriculum Context
Curriculum Context: to enhance the media environment in which Journalism graduates will work: improving the 'media literacy' of key target groups, providing new opportunities for Journalism students to engage with public audiences during their training, and raising public awareness of the vital role of journalists and media in the promotion and protection of citizens' rights within a multi-cultural democracy.
Specific Project Objectives are:
On behalf of EJTA the following persons are involved in the project:
Nico Drok, Nadia Vissers and Leen van Tolhuysen.
More information about the project can be found at the DESTIN project website.
The project is co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.
This detailed analysis of what journalism students should be taught was adopted by EJTA in 2006 at its AGM in Tartu.
It has been used as a benchmark by other organisations around the world, including UNESCO.
It has been revised in 2013 in the light of the dramatic changes in journalism practice over the past years.
EJTA’s fully searchable mobility catalogue enables students to investigate courses elsewhere in Europe for which they could apply.
FORMER PROJECTS
Dates: 3 – 5 July 2013
Theme: RENEWING JOURNALISM THROUGH EDUCATION
Organizing committee: The European Journalism Education Association (EJTA) and the Flemish/Dutch organization of journalism education (VNOJ).
Congress hosts: Thomas More and the city of Mechelen, Belgium